Koban: The Mark of Koban (44 page)

Whichever one may have hit it first was a
toss-up, and the twice-struck wolfbat’s screech ended as suddenly as it began.
It tumbled five feet to the ground and rolled to a stop. Each boy ignored the
motionless wolfbat, instead focusing on its squad mates, which had briefly
started down just as the two boys sprang into action. Now they were flapping
furiously higher and away. They were already out of jazzer range, but not out
of pistol range of the gun on Ethan’s hip. Carson’s gun and weapons belt were
in the pit, to avoid making the bats more cautious. Neither boy was interested
in killing a wolfbat. They actually rather liked them, and now they had one to
examine up close, and alive.

Carson retrieved his pistol and belt from the
pit, and a sturdy collapsed wire cage they had talked Neri Barr into making for
them. The machinist hadn’t even asked them what they intended to put into the
cage. They unfolded the framework and placed the twenty-pound wolfbat inside,
twisting the wires at the corners to hold it securely closed.

Carson considered their “catch” for a minute
as both boys studied it, lifted the lips to see the short canines, and fingered
the sharp little hooked claws along the “forearms” of the wings and on the
short hind legs where the teal wing membrane attached. “These back leg hooks are
how they carry small prey when they fly away.” Carson lectured his friend.

Ethan ran fingers along the wing and side of
the comatose predator. “The fur is so soft, and it’s waterproof. That’s why Dad
says the Hub City snobs make hats and clothes out of their skin. I think
wolfbats are glitzy. I won’t let anyone kill ours, not just to make a stupid
hat.”

Glitzy
was part of
the new kid’s language the hundreds of Prime City kids were inventing, completely
sure
their parents and other adults would
never
understand their
slang. It was
fabuli
, knowing words that even the adults didn’t
understand. As every generation had thought before them.

Carson looked at the distance they needed to
cover to get to the dome. “Even if we run, it might wake up before we get it
out of sight. What if it makes a lot of noise? Should we stun it again? Jake might
tell our folks if he realizes it’s still alive.”

“Car, Jake already knows we stunned it, he can
see every square inch out here. It’ll be in a cage. So long as we don’t let it
lose in the dome he won’t call an alert.”

“Yea, you’re right. Besides, after we take it
to class tomorrow everyone will know about it anyway. Then, right in front of
the whole class, we can ask Mr. Rigson to talk to Commander Mirikami for us.
You
know
the other kids will be on our side. The Commander might let us
have one of the empty rooms with all the windows, and let it live in there. Nobody
uses those rooms anyway ‘cause they don’t have any privacy.”

“Some of the Hubbers are moving back here my
Mon says. What if a bunch of them move here and fill up all of our spaces like
those?”

“They won’t want to live in a room with one
glass wall. And if either of our Moms hears us call them Hubbers again, we
might be spending a lot of time in our own rooms.”

“Car, it was
your
Mom that broke the
nose of their old mayor. She didn’t like those people very much back then.”

“That was when old lady Cahill called herself
a Governor, not a Mayor. Mayor MacDougal is friendly with us. He told Commander
Mirikami that he even agrees that probably nobody from Human Space, where we
all came from, will ever find us. That’s why some people are moving here, to
get adapted as real Kobani, just like us and our folks are. They can’t have
kids if they don’t change.”

“Well, we need to get home for supper or
somebody will ask Jake what we’re doing.”

They were close to the inner electric fence,
so they had nearly two miles to walk back to the Prime City dome. Prime City
had reclosed the outer compound gates several years ago, and the dangerous rhinolo
driven out or hunted down for food. They permitted the “safer” grazing animals
to remain, since they provided easier game to hunt for people that were too
afraid to venture outside of the compound.

The electric fence on top of the wall was
never rebuilt, so the outer compound wasn’t fully safe. As the boys started for
the dome, carrying the unconscious wolfbat’s cage between them, their backs were
toward the twenty-foot electric fence. Two pairs of blue eyes were watching
them.

The two rippers, a large male and a female had
observed the two young humans capture one of the flying animals, using small
stinging sticks that threw no stingers. Instead of killing the flyer, they
placed it in a not-live container. Now the young humans were oblivious to what
was behind them, looking at their captive, making noises between each other,
showing no awareness of possible dangers. Just like stupid prey.

They also had the dangerous type of sting
sticks with them, and had faster reactions than the larger mature versions of
their kind, but they were too careless. When the prey was far enough from the
not-live killing vines, where they could not hear the slight sounds that were
unavoidable, both predators planned to leap over the dangerous barrier. They
touched frills briefly, to coordinate their intentions and the stalking to
come. They would go different directions once beyond the killing vines.

The humans deviated around some low bushes, which
they had to pass, and that growth briefly obstructed their view if they looked
back. The moment they went around the shrubbery the two rippers rushed forward,
and as they neared the not-life vines, they leaped upward, with those massive
haunches driving their muscular bodies easily over the twenty-foot fence, each
clearing the deadly barrier by several feet.

They landed with their powerful front legs
absorbing the landing with a cushioning effect that limited the sound. Now,
before the objects of their stalking moved clear of the vision obstructing
bushes, the rippers went belly down to the ground and one moved right, the
other left, taking advantage of clumps of similarly teal colored clumps of
grass, terrain dips, and other shrubbery. They moved parallel to the two human’s
path, staying behind them and to the side. A lone everblue fir tree on the most
direct path to the large nest was the agreed upon trigger point for the ripper’s
simultaneous ambush. When they passed that, the predators would rush them and
pounce together.

“Ethan, where do we want to keep the cage
overnight? It needs to be close to our classroom, but we don’t want Mr. Rigson
to hear it when he unlocks the door if it flutters around.”

“How about the utility closet they built down
the hall from the classrooms? Nobody goes in there until after school, for
cleaning stuff. There are some old tablecloths stored in there that we can
cover the cage with, and the bat can’t pull at them and tear them up either.
They’re Smart Fabric.”

As he spoke, Carson belatedly looked back
along their path, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Noting his action, Ethan
looked up and around for any sign of returning wolfbats. They had been chatting
and neglecting the drummed-in security protocols their fathers always were
drilling into them. Their current project was a serious deviation from their
normal restriction to stay within a mile of the dome. However, too many eyes
would have seen them build the spider hole, and would have asked questions.
They had heard many stories about those hidey-holes that Mirikami’s combat team
had used against the Krall. It was fun to make and use one of their own.

It was hot today, but the two boys were born heat
adapted, and also had the strength and endurance that their parents had needed
to have
added
as genetic enhancements. The boys had always lived with
the dual nervous systems, and could effortlessly focus on the input from either
set. The organic superconductors did increase their reaction times slightly
over Normals, or Controls as Aunt Aldry and Uncle Rafe described them.

The Second Generation children, or SG’s as the
scientists labeled them, knew that their strength would continue to grow to become
significantly greater than that of Normal adults once they matured. There weren’t
any Normal children against which to measure SGs. That was because unmodified
Normal adults could not have children on Koban. Once modified to be an SG,
their children were born as SGs.

The boys automatically studied the everblue
tree as they approached. It’s year round dense needles could conceal a threat,
so they automatically stayed a hundred feet away since they each had one hand
occupied holding the cage. The wolfbat had started snorting as it breathed,
indicating it was probably beginning to recover.

The dual ripper attacks, when they came, were
from opposite sides. The ear splitting roars spurred the boys into action, and they
had already seen the two big cats as they left the ground in their leaps. They
released the cage, both hands reaching a jazzer and a pistol butt before the
cage could hit the ground. Even as they drew, they fell backwards towards the
ground to try to let the cats pass over them, and to gain a few tenth’s of a
second more time to raise their weapons.

Both boys, using their faster nervous systems,
recognized they wouldn’t make it in time because they couldn’t control their
muscles as quickly as they sent the impulses to them along superconducting
nerves. The two cats, in a beautifully coordinated move, twisted in air to meet
paws to paws, halting the impending overshoot, and they dropped directly down,
each straddling one of the eight year olds.

The rippers opened massive jaws and swiftly
lowered them over the fragile human skulls, canines poised for crushing kills.
The boys shoved their hands up, pushing at the neck frills of the two massive
killers.

From their victims, the thrilling sensations
of their surprise attack poured through the two rippers, and they froze in
place, enjoying the pleasure, the sheer fun!

“Kobalt! Get off me. Your breath smells like
rhinolo butt.” Carson was pissed. The anger directed mostly inwards.

Ethan felt equally embarrassed and chagrined.
“Kit, you made your point. Let me up please.”

The cats didn’t fully understand the human
words, but the mental images connected with the boy’s words made the meanings as
clear as crystal to them. Who ever said cats don’t laugh had never met a
ripper.

The highly amused cats stepped to the side of
each boy, allowing them to get to their feet. Carson still had a hand on Kobalt’s
frill, sending a mental inquiry. Would he tell Mom and Dad?

Kobalt looked directly into Carson’s dark
eyes. He was a little shocked at the question. They were “brothers” of the pride;
parents did
not
need to know everything their children did. The eight
hundred-pound ripper loved its human “parents,” but it frequently filtered out
the images that it chose to share with them, or with any human except Carson.
It shared everything with him, things it might not willingly share with his
sister, Kit. However, humans did not have a very good ability to filter
thoughts and images. Anything Carson learned from Kobalt, Kit learned by frill
touch with Carson. The same was true between Ethan and Kit. The boys were
beginning to learn how to guard their images, and to filter, but it wasn’t
instinctive for them.

The cats were less than a year older than
their two “siblings” were, but by the nature of differing evolution, Kobalt and
Kit had grown and matured much faster than slower developing human children.
Long after the two cats were capable of independent action, trusted to go
outside on their own, taught (clumsily) to hunt by their human fathers, their
smaller pride mates had needed protection for many more years, and still needed
that protection. As their laxity today had so clearly demonstrated.

The boys decided that riding Kobalt and Kit
back to the dome would be too awkward with the need to carry the cage. The cats
had known of the boy’s interest in wolfbats for some time, and knew they would
try to capture one alive. They hadn’t known they would choose several days when
the two cats were gone on a mission, making first contact with one of the two
neighboring ripper prides.

Leaving the two boys to walk the rest of the
way back with their caged captive, they ran ahead with their ground-covering
lope. They needed to share with pride elders what they had accomplished. The
two boys now knew that, of course, and talked about it as they walked.

“That one female ripper, Telror, killed a
friend of my Mom and of Commander Mirikami. I wonder if we can really have…,”
he paused, trying to find a word that matched the images shared from the wild
pride.

Ethan, knowing exactly the mental images Carson
was struggling over found a word he though matched. “Truce. I think that would
be the right word. It would be where they leave us alone if we leave them
alone.”

“Right, Kobalt’s mind impression was that we could
hunt the same herds as they do if we don’t kill for fun, only for food. We also
have to share with them the parts we don’t like to eat. I think it was Kit’s
idea to do that. She knows you and I hate liver, brains, hearts, lungs, guts,
and other yucky parts. Rippers like some of those a lot.”

“My Mom likes liver!” Ethan made a face.